Reverend C.T. Walker Housing Dev. Fund Corp. v. City of New York

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER

*1  Appellant Reverend C.T. Walker Housing Development Fund Corporation (“C.T. Walker”) appeals from orders of the Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of New York denying C.T. Walker’s motion to sell real property located at 181 West 135th Street in New York City (“the Property”) and granting its motion to lift the automatic stay provided by 11 U.S.C. §362. For the reasons discussed below, the Court affirms both orders.¹IThe relevant facts are not in dispute. C.T. Walker had owned the Property since the late 1980s, and it rented the bottom floor to the YMCA, which operated a Youth Center there. In 1987, the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development (“HPD”) agreed to fund the development of the Property for low-income housing. Those funds were conditioned on C.T. Walker’s agreement to covenants partially restricting the Property’s use for 20 years to low-income, rent-stabilized housing units. C.T. Walker was able to provide these benefits, in part, thanks to a property tax exemption from the City. However, sometime before C.T. Walker filed its petition, the exemption expired, and the City declined to renew it. In the following